Hewitt's shambles is wrecking our careers

In response to Jasper Gerard's criticism of an outburst by a junior doctor on TV's Question Time headlined
'Frankly, doctor, your bedside manner stinks', (Opinion, last week) I can only reply: frankly, Jasper, your ignorance astounds me.

We are not averse to change in our selection process. What we are averse to is the incompetent way the Department of Health has, in effect, spat in the faces of doctors and patients. Applications were lost, incorrect ones sent for the wrong jobs, doctors were made ineligible incorrectly ... The list is endless.

I am happy to move house, uproot my family or leave medicine IF I have competed fairly with my peers and been deemed not good enough.

What we cannot accept is being thrown on the scrap heap after more than 10 years' training and service to the NHS without even having our applications looked at.

My husband and I want to start a family. We can't buy a first home. We do not know whether we will be employed in August and, if so, if we will be in the same city. Mei Nortley BSc MBBS MRCSTrainee surgeon London W9

As someone with six doctors in my family, I know that the problem is not a surplus of junior doctors. As Patricia Hewitt stated on Question Time, those not selected will still have jobs. But because of the failure of the new procedures, thousands of junior doctors will not know by the time their existing contracts expire whether their applications have been dealt with, if they have been selected, where they will be working or whether they have a job. Hence the complaint that thousands will have no jobs. Stephen ChangBickley, Kent

I was told more than two months ago by a member of the Modernising Medical Careers panel that the Department of Health data on unemployed doctors was false. Instead of between 8,000 and 10,000 doctors being at risk of unemployment, the correct figure is in excess of 14,000.

Since then I and others have approached Patricia Hewitt directly, via my MP and via interviews both with the BBC and Channel 4 News to clarify this discrepancy. I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer.

Initially, I was prepared to believe that she was misleading rather than lying, but with each passing day the latter seems more plausible.

No one has a divine right to the job of their choice, but the public have a right to servants - both doctors and politicians - who are honest. A degree of unemployment is one technique for ensuring a competitive workforce. However, I would rather the focus of journalistic minds was on the scandal of billions of pounds spent on training medics for unemployment than on attacking the doctor who was on TV. Dr David NichollChair of specialist training committee for neurology (West Midlands) City Hospital, Birmingham

I write as a junior doctor with 10 years' training who has been given a grubby ticket in the shambolic career lottery that is the new system.

Gerard forgets that the NHS holds a monopoly over the employment and training of junior doctors in the UK. I cannot simply stroll off to India by way of 'paying back countries whose medical staff we have pinched'. I can't speak Hindi for a start.

Clearly, Australia and New Zealand are not going to be able to absorb the fallout. The thought of having the career I have dreamt of since I was 12 years old snatched from me so cruelly is unbearable. Dr Eleanor BeswickSenior house officer in intensive care University Hospital, Coventry

Well said about that dreadful junior doctor on Question Time. It even makes one feel sympathetic towards Patricia Hewitt. Michael TongKingsbridge, Devon